Radio Fluxus: Stories from the Fluxus Archives is a podcast series that features our conversations with scholars, artists, curators, conservators, researchers and Fluxus enthusiasts. In these conversations, the interviewees are encouraged to tell their stories about one specific Fluxus artwork and to share their views on its use and potential activation. The protagonists of these stories are artworks.
The project aims to explore alternative ways of experiencing intermedia art and to understand how storytelling can contribute to the way we appreciate Fluxus’s legacy. What does storytelling tell us about how Fluxus lives on and is continued in people’s minds and memories? How do we remember, and how does what we recall change the work which left traces in memory? What does it mean to activate Fluxus by telling a story?
Our interviewees have the freedom to propose a work they wish to speak about. Each episode commences with a description of the concept of the selected work, along with its material manifestations. This description is followed by the account of the narrator’s personal memories of dealing with the work. The episode concludes with their ideas related to the work’s use and activation.
You can listen to the podcast directly on this website or subscribe to it on Spotify and on Apple Podcast.
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Episode 7: ‘Performance Piece #8’ and ‘“T” Dictionary’ (1965) by Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles’s “Performance Piece #8” (Summer 1965) is a language-based proposition published in the first Great Beat Pamphlet (New York: Something Else Press, 1965). It also exists as a “graphic performance” entitled “The ‘T’ Dictionary”. “The Dictionary” was first made public in the book “The Four Suits” (New York: Something Else Press, 1965). The following…
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Episode 6: ‘Dream Piece’ (1976) by John Armleder
‘Dream Piece’ (1976) is a performance by John Armleder, conceived and enacted within the expansive context of the Ecart Group, an artistic collective that thrived in Geneva during the 1970s. Ecart’s approach to art bore a strong imprint of Fluxus influence, a fact made evident by the numerous characteristics that situated the group firmly within…
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Episode 5: ‘Orange Event No. 3’ (1963) by Bengt af Klintberg
Composed by Bengt af Klintberg in 1963, Orange Event No 3 (or Apelsinhändelse nr 3 in Swedish) is one of the scores from the series Twenty-Five Orange Events. The series was published several times, the first time in Swedish in 1966, together with other writings by af Klintberg, The English translation of 25 Orange Events…
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Episode 4: ‘Open and Shut Case’ (1965) by Ken Friedman
This episode features “Open and Shut Case” (1965) by Ken Friedman presented by the artist himself. Open and Shut Case (1965) is a score-based work which manifests itself in a variety of ways. As is often the case for Fluxus events, the score has been written down a posteriori, out of the creation of an…
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Episode 3: ‘Mirror Piece’ (1963) by Mieko Shiomi
The third episode of our podcast presents Mirror Piece (1963) by Japanese artist Mieko Shiomi. This work, as many other Fluxus scores, does not have a singular manifestation but rather exists as many different entities, the material ones and the performative ones captured through documentation. Two versions of the handwritten score – in English and…
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Episode 2: ‘Thursday’ (1963) by George Brecht
This episode features George Brecht’s event score titled, Thursday. The work, which exists in various instantiations, approximates the tradition of musical notations rather than the object-oriented realm of visual arts. In museum collections, it appears either as a note scribbled down on a piece of creased, white sheet of paper or as one of the…
As a soundbed this podcast uses Bio Unit – Fidget Spinner, Xylo-Ziko – Rainbow by Simon Mathewson and Lee Rosevere’s Betrayal. All music is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Activating Fluxus 